


Stay Awake

by poetatertot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cloud Watching, Light Angst, M/M, just popsicles and chill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetatertot/pseuds/poetatertot
Summary: Four paladins take a moment to relax in one of Lance's favorite places.





	Stay Awake

The sky was brazenly blue, so perfect and crisp that Lance could almost taste it. He ran his tongue over the tips of his fingers, relishing the way the sticky sugar remnants of his popsicle bled from forefinger and thumb into his mouth, past lips stained cerulean. 

“That one looks like an angel,” he laughed, pointing with the other hand towards a passing cloud. The horizon was full of them, white and fluffy like a frolicking herd of sheep, and if Lance squinted he could almost believe that’s exactly what they were. Sheep, and cars, and perfectly sculpted three-tier wedding cakes.

“No way,” Pidge argued from behind him, sucking thoughtfully on their own blaster pop. He could hear them slurping at it vigorously, saving the melt from spilling onto their sweater. “It looks way more like a rocket. See the exhaust coming out the bottom?”

“You’re wrong,” Lance sniffed, defiant. “That’s just.. his shoes is all.”

“Shoes?” Keith echoed, disbelieving. “What kind of shoes are you thinking of?” Lance can imagine his expression, the way his brow furrows as he tries to sound disgruntled and blase, but they both know the way his eyes crinkle at the corners and the gentle upwards curve of his lips betray any semblance of sourness. He’s smiling on the inside, threatening to burst with sunshine into the open air, the way he always is when the sky is bright and blue. 

“I’m going to have to agree with Pidge on this one,” Hunk says, gesturing at the cloud with his bare popsicle stick. He finished his fudgesicle in record time before the rest of them, reading the joke off the end with an eager smile the way he always liked to. “Look, see? The wings are way too far down. Unless your angel’s got shoe-wings?”

“Uh duh, Hermes?” Lance sniffs, but doesn’t have the chance to argue the point any further. His popsicle wrapper is dripping slow, blue-raspberry ooze onto his t-shirt. “Pass me a napkin, would ya?”

Keith shoves the napkin in his face, squishing soft paper up Lance’s nostrils and into his mouth. Lance squawks, clambering at his gloved hand for purchase, and gets an even better mouthful of cheap paper. Keith is laughing all the while, pressing insistent fingers into the curvatures of Lance’s face as if he’s mapping the surface.

“You asked for one,” he chuckles, relinquishing his grip. His hand falls into the grass beside Lance’s head, curling up beside Lance’s left ear. Lance can barely feel it there, tickling the soft blades at his earlobe. He lets out a gentle shudder even as he spits the napkin out to wipe at his tee.

They lay there in the grass in gentle silence for a long moment, staring at the sky. The whole world seems as if it's made up of blue and green and white, all lining up like a child’s drawing in picturesque simplicity. The grass itches at Lance’s bare ankles but he doesn’t mind. How could he, when his best friends are all right here with him? Everything is as it should be.

“It’s so nice here,” he hears himself say. He runs his palms over the soft field, loving the way it bends and tickles at his fingertips. Even the earth feels warm and alive, as if it might stretch to cocoon his brown body and take him into itself. “I wish..” He pauses, swallowing. He doesn’t want to ruin the moment.

“You wish?” Keith murmurs softly beside him. His voice doesn’t waver the way Lance’s does, but Lance hears the sadness there all the same. They both already know.

“We could stay here forever,” Lance finishes. He lets the words hang there above them, a dark umbrella at odds with the perfect, crystalline sun and sky. 

“We can’t,” Keith admonishes, but his tone is gentle. They both have gone over this so many times, over and over as the clouds pass and the sun hangs eternally at one point in the sky. “You know that.”

“Knowing it doesn’t make it easier,” Lance retorts. “I’m just— I was just saying, is all. I wish we could.”

The wind is picking up, whistling over the grassy hills and through Lance’s hair, tickling his eyelashes where they stick up into the breeze. Suddenly the warmth of the sun feels so weak, paling in comparison to the chill that’s taken root inside of his own chest. 

“Maybe one day,” Hunk whispers. “One day we’ll be able to come back. And— and we’ll really be here. Forever, I mean. We can stay as long as we want.”

“Yeah,” Lance sighs, but he knows that something like that is impossible. There will always be distress signals ringing, planets searching for their help, distant civilizations in need of rescue. There always will be work for them, as long as Zarkon is alive. “Maybe.”

A single cloud passes over the sun, blotting out the weakening rays. The grass is cold beneath Lance’s palm, tickling turned into an itch that needles through his clothes at the tender skin beneath. The popsicle sits as a cold lump in his stomach, and Lance can taste bile where the last of it is bubbling in the back of his throat. He’s covered in goosebumps without the sun shining down on them.

“Lance,” Keith murmurs at his left. Lance looks at him, tilting his head just enough to make eye contact. The grass between them sticks up to paint emerald lines on Keith’s pale face, brushing against his chiseled cheekbones and poking into his tousled dark hair. Even in the fading light and cold, Keith is beautiful.  
His lips, chapped but still rosebud pink, curve into a tired smile. Lance can see the weariness in his eyes. There’s a single divot between his eyes, permanent from the stress. 

“It’s time to go,” he says, voice barely audible over the rising wind. Lance can barely hear it even with the smallest of distances between their faces. “C’mon.”

“Yeah,” Lance agrees. He always agrees — he has to — but the admission never gets any easier.

He closes his eyes against the greying sky, letting himself fall away from the cooling earth and the itchy grass and his fingertips, sticky with popsicle juice. He slides, away and away, spinning through the darkness into that cold, tiny dark space. Tiny, but big enough to eat him whole.

_Someday,_ he tells himself. _Someday. It has to be true._

When he opens his eyes again, the clock tells him it's only been an hour since he fell asleep. Around him, the ship hums low, alive and working even at such a late hour. The wall of his bedroom, cold and white, glints against the reflection of millions of stars outside his porthole window. 

Lance watches them fly by, infinitesimal and impossible to count. He counts them the way he would sheep: _one, two, three, four.._

The cold numbs him back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> After 3 years of writing no fanfiction, my Drive is suddenly full of Voltron?? Looks like both Vik and I are making a comeback.
> 
> Come talk to us at poetatertot.tumblr.com


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